Did you know that there’s a better way to meal plan? If you start by making a list of recipes and then a list of ingredients, you’re probably wasting food and money. Are you one of those people who usually starts your meal plan by browsing through Pinterest or your favorite recipe sites and making a list of the recipes you want to make for […]
Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you have almost no food in the house and no money? That was the situation that Baker’s Man and I found ourselves in back at a time that we refer to as “when we were young and in love.” Both of us were self supporting. He had a full-time job, and I had a couple of […]
What is a five dollar grocery challenge? I learned of this challenge from Amanda over at The Fundamental Home YouTube Channel. She completed two of these challenges, but I’m only completing one challenge. This challenge gives you five dollars with which you are required to get enough food for one person for three meals per day for three days. Why would anyone need to do […]
Regular visitors to Patty Cake’s Pantry will know that I recently completed my $25 per week grocery budget experiment. I was inspired to try this by a blog post written by Amanda from The Fundamental Home. Since I live in Southern California, I wondered if it would be possible to replicate her success. As usual, I convinced my friend, Angie, from Kitchen Southern Hospitality to […]
The sixth week of our $25 grocery budget challenge is finished, and I will no longer be posting my grocery hauls and menu plan here on Patty Cake’s Pantry. This challenge has been a learning experience for all of us, and I was surprised that I didn’t feel like we were deprived during this time. Except for my refusal to buy soft drinks, no one […]
This is going to be my last week posting this experiment, but I plan to continue with a more restrictive grocery budget until the week before Thanksgiving. I think that I will follow Amanda’s lead, and allow $30.00 per week for our family’s groceries, but I know that as long as I have a plan, and stick to it, I will be able to adhere […]
The fifth week of my challenge has come and gone, and we did much better this week than last, but we continue to have difficulty with adhering to our menu plan. Sue Chef pointed out that it has been a month, and we have still not had pulled pork sliders or Linguine with Clam Sauce. She’s right, but fortunately, the ingredients for those two dishes […]
After last week’s disaster, and the previous two weeks of being over budget, I knew that I needed a better plan, so I headed out for my shopping trip with a list in hand that I intended to follow. This week I skipped the produce sale at Vallarta, and shopped only within a few miles of my home. I was determined to stick to within […]
This week’s review is about the cost of not having a good plan. You will recall that during my third week of this challenge, I went to the store without a plan. I purchased what was on sale, and what seemed like a good idea, but I didn’t have a plan for how I would be using those items. Because I didn’t have a plan, […]
After spending more than twice the allotted $25 last week on groceries, I was committed to do my best to adhere to my budget this week. The problem was that this is an Aldi week. Once a month, Bus Boy has a doctor appointment in Civilization, and there’s an Aldi a few miles from the hospital. Whenever he goes to the hospital, we swing by […]